


Adrift

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen, Seasickness, Shipwreck, The Shark Affair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Set in the interval in the Shark Affair between Napoleon sinking the ship and their getting home. The passengers and crew of Shark's ship take to the lifeboats and hope to be picked up soon. Meanwhile, Illya is very seasick.





	Adrift

The sea was black to the horizon, the sky black above them. The water looked like crude oil, like a slick, depthless monster waiting to rise up and draw them all down into its depths. That wasn’t a positive way to look at it, Illya knew, but he couldn’t help his thoughts inclining to darkness. He had never liked the sea.

He had grown up with water in his life, but this width and depth of water all around him was hard to bear. His childhood water had been the river; the sparkling blue of the Dnieper in summer, the grey of the Dnieper through spring and autumn, the white ice of the Dnieper under slate skies in the winter. He had skated on small frozen lakes in the parks and swum in the river in the summer. Sometimes he had gone with his family down to the Black Sea, and they had enjoyed holidays on its beaches. He had swum in the cool water under the blazing sun, tasted the unaccustomed tang of salt water on his lips, and tanned himself on the shore. He had never wanted to go in the boats that moved around on its surface. One of his most vivid childhood memories was being on a boat somewhere; he couldn’t remember where. He just knew that the boat was small and even though the water was hardly rough, he had felt like he was dying. His father had wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tightly, but the sickness hadn’t gone away.

Night in the South Pacific was like another world. Endless. Vast. Empty. The only life was this little cluster of boats, and how big the ocean around them seemed. Each little boat was an island in itself. Together they made an archipelago, with their miscellany of passengers in each. Napoleon, with his experience of sailing his own cutter _ , _ was captaining one of the boats that floated not far off in the darkness. Illya’s experience as a naval Lieutenant meant that he had taken another. Members of Shark’s crew headed a couple of others. The disparate passenger complement of Captain Shark’s vessel were spread out between them, most of them as ill-equipped to life on the sea as one would expect bakers, musicians, thatchers, or librarians to be. They had to trust the crew to captain those other boats. There was no choice.

Some five hundred yards away the hulk of Shark’s ship could still be seen. It felt like the last vestige of anything solid in this liquid world, but from it flames were rising like living beasts, licking along its wood, bubbling paint from the metal, seeking everything edible it could find. The voices of the passengers rose and fell and licked about like those flames, a buzzing in Illya’s ears that he could do without.

‘We have to go back for the man!’ someone shouted from just in front of him, and he turned around and grabbed and jerked at the oar that Illya was holding.

The rebellion was contagious. Another man chimed in, and one of the women added her voice. Illya kept his hands firmly clenched around the oar and said, ‘We can’t go back for him. It’s too late.’

Perhaps Napoleon could have knocked Captain Shark out and dragged him to a boat, but he hadn’t. Perhaps Napoleon had recognised the poetic necessity for the man to go down with his ship. There was no place for him in this world. Maybe he had also recognised the potential danger of a man who would be classified as unhinged being a passenger in one of these tiny boats, especially since he commanded the respect of so many of the others here. It would be a cold, logical decision to leave him behind, and Napoleon was almost as good at that as he was at compassion.

‘Listen, you jumped up little Russian – ’

Illya had no idea who this man in front of him was, no idea of his profession, no idea of his nationality or his standing in the civilised world. Right now all of those things had fallen away. At sea there was only one law. It was the law that had caused Napoleon to be stripped to his waist and whipped on the deck. It was a law that kept crews sane and together. At this moment in time, in this very small boat in this very large ocean, Illya was commander, and he had to be obeyed. Women were crying and men were getting louder and more restive, and Illya made a decision.

For a small man he had been blessed with a very loud voice. It had been necessary, on the submarine.  Although he had graduated from the waters of the Dnieper to the wide waters of the world’s oceans,  a lot of his time had been spent  beneath the surface. Serving on a Soviet submarine was a cramped, stinking experience. It hadn’t been his choice, but, as a highly intelligent young Soviet of small stature, that destiny was almost inevitable. It was that, the KGB, or the GRU, and at that point in his life he hadn’t wanted to find himself even deeper in the bizarre whirl of suspicion and conspiracy that characterised the Soviet Union. He was already in deeply enough just by living in it. So he had found himself serving on a Soviet submarine, in northern climes, and when he had been above water the sea had always been varying shades of grey. On the surface or at periscope depth he had always felt terrible as the thing pitched and rolled with the waves. When he had been below he had used his voice to his best advantage, making men do as he needed them to do, because his voice was all he had.

He let go of the oar and stood up in the bow of the boat, holding his torch so that it illuminated his face from below. That angle worked in the movies, at least, to inspire awe and fear in people.

‘We are not going back,’ he roared, in a voice loud enough to reach everyone on this boat, and probably in the others nearby. ‘Going back would be suicide. We are not here to commit suicide.’

Muttering again. It was a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Shark had taken these people and made them feel so useful and so at home that many of them had grown sympathetic to his cause. They had seen him as their protector, as their saviour. If they spent too long in these boats he could foresee things getting very difficult for him and Napoleon, since it was they who had destroyed these people’s Ark.

‘I don’t see how saving a man’s life is suicide!’ that man shouted back at him. ‘I don’t care what you say, we’re going back for him!’

A woman chimed in, and another man. Illya glanced over his right shoulder towards the ship. She was burning merrily now, the bridge streaming smoke and flame into the sky. He could see Shark from here, standing on the deck, outlined by the flames behind him. He looked more like a statue than a man. He looked like a figure from a poem or a myth, hardly like a mortal being at all.

‘We  _ are not going back _ ,’ Illya growled out.

H e ducked as an explosion cracked into the night. It wasn’t the first. The ship was packed with various munitions. That was what had allowed Napoleon to organise the sabotage, but it also made the vessel terrifyingly dangerous as the fire ate it from the inside out.

Something splashed into the black water very near their boat. Illya knelt still for a moment, a hand on the bottom boards, and then he stood again.

‘We are not going back,’ he said more quietly now, quietly enough that people had to stop and listen to catch his words. ‘For a start, that vessel is full of explosives. Secondly, when she goes down, if there are any empty air pockets left in it they will suck water down into them. It will suck you in too. Captain Shark made a decision to stay with his ship. That was his decision.’

An odd silence fell. Even the weeping was quieter now. Illya stood on the gently swaying boards of the boat and tried not to reveal that far from being strong and in command, he felt like he wanted to heave his guts over the side into the black, forgiving sea.

Another explosion, and that was excuse enough for him to regain his seat. He put his hands back over the wooden oar and let its cool soak into his palms and curled fingers. It was a grounding feeling. It didn’t stop the sickness, but it helped. He could feel the power of the water against the blade of the oar. With the oar in his hand he could use the water’s power to help him. He felt more connected with this awful, fluctuating mass of water that surrounded him. It might make him want to vomit, but he could use it to push himself to where he needed to go.

It had been interesting, trying to hide the extent of his seasickness from his crewmates in the submarine. He was so vilely seasick when he was on the surface that there was very little he could do to disguise it,  but that didn’t matter so much, because everyone was seasick then . A lot of the men had sat at their posts clutching bags in front of them, just in case, so as long as he kept quiet and didn’t move about too much, he had managed to fit in. He had tried to make sure there was little in his stomach, and tried to control the retching. Often it was as much as he could do just to see. Below, the boat was steady, but there he was sick from the stench of diesel fumes and claustrophobia. He had hidden that well enough, though. Very few people had ever found out that Illya Kuryakin was neither a natural sailor nor submariner, and his closest friends had approached the problem with a mixture of sympathy and teasing.

He wouldn’t have swapped that time despite all of the unpleasantness. He had gained years worth of experience in just a few months of active service. There had been beauty, too. One morning they had surfaced in a dead calm, far up above the Arctic Circle. He had stood on the broad deck and watched the blazing golden fire of the sun as it lay on the horizon, imparting a reflected fire to every facet and angle of the broken ice around him. The ice had been a palette of blues and greys and whites and gold, the sky had been an eggshell blue, and a polar bear had stood some few hundred yards away and just regarded him imperiously, through black eyes.

‘Illya. Illya!’

He realised that was Napoleon calling him, through the buzz of voices and the crackling and spitting of the fire far across the dark surface of the sea. He had cut himself off from all of it momentarily; the presence of the other boats, the presence of all of these troublesome human beings in his own boat.

‘Illya, we should all pull a bit further away,’ Napoleon called. His boat was only a few yards away, lit by various torches and lanterns, swaying uneasily on the black water. ‘Those explosions are getting dangerous.’

‘Explosions are always dangerous,’ Illya replied, but he turned back to the people in the boat. ‘Oarsmen, we’re all going to pull away. On my mark.’

Coxing at Cambridge had helped him with commanding a boat, too. They had been delighted with him in Cambridge, almost as delighted as the Russian Navy were to get such a compact, strong young man into one of their submarines. He hadn’t felt seasick on the waterways in Cambridge. The water hadn’t been salty, and he had been able to sit in those long, narrow boats and roar at the men to drive them to their best speeds.

‘Pull,’ he said, pulling with his oar, and, to his great relief, the others on the oars pulled in time. ‘ _ Pull. Pull. Pull. _ ’

They didn’t move more than another hundred yards. It seemed like far enough. There was debris scattering down in increasing volume now, but nothing reached the boats. He looked across at Napoleon’s boat and wished he could see his eyes. If they were in the same boat they would exchange one of those looks. 

_ Are you all right? _

_ Yes, I’d rather not be here, but I’m all right. _

He could only just make out Napoleon because of his position in the boat. He was a black hump near the bow, sitting in the same place as Illya in his own boat. Little glints of light occasionally caught his face or his hair. He thought of sitting on that awful life raft waiting to be intercepted before they had been hauled aboard Shark’s ship. They had both sat half-slumped on that raft, Napoleon because he was bored, and Illya because, by god, he hated the sea.

‘She’s going,’ someone said quietly.

A quiet awe was beginning to fall over everyone. The four little boats sat swaying on the water, and silence slipped through them. After a moment the only sound from the boats was a sudden squawk from Elsa Barnman’s bird, and her shushing it loudly.

From across the sea the ship cracked and spat. When the wind moved sometimes a warmer draft of air puffed across the water, bringing with it the scent of burning wood and oil, the scent of hot metal and of cordite. Illya couldn’t see Captain Shark silhouetted on the deck now, and he was half afraid that the thoughtless breeze might bring the scent of burning flesh. How would their passengers react to that? How would they react to the graphic reminder of the horror that Shark was facing?

He hoped for his sake that he wasn’t burning. He hoped that he would drown, or, better still, that one of those explosions had already put an end to it all.

The burning was closer to the water now. He could see by the angle of it that the deck was sloping. Whoever had spoken was right. She was going. It was like watching a death. Shark’s death probably instilled pathos enough in the passengers, but it didn’t touch Illya in the same way. Shark had chosen his path from the beginning. He had chosen to be an outlaw, with all the risks that came along with that life. But the ship; that was sad. She had carried people safely for thousands of miles, and now she was being riven apart. She would sit on the ocean floor for hundreds of years to come. She would become a home for fish.

‘There,’ a voice said. He thought it was Napoleon, but his focus was all on the ship.

The silence was like the silence in a church during a funeral. He sat there, watching, as the ship sank lower still in the water. Eventually she hissed like a crowd of furious cats, burning metal and wood being quenched in the cool sea. The light began to grow less as flames were doused, their reflections sparking and rippling and dying away in the water. Then she gurgled under, huge billows of steam rising at first, the waters churning, the ship creaking as if she were in pain. Finally the last part slipped under the surface and the waters closed as if nothing had ever been there.

Everything was still and dark. There was nothing on the surface but an iridescent slick picked out by the light of the torches in the boats. Everything was so strangely quiet. Some of the women resumed their crying. He heard one of the Melksham’s children asking something in a high pitched voice, and then being hushed by her mother. Elsa Barnman’s bird cried out and then fell silent again. The men started to murmur amongst themselves again in quiet tones, like mourners walking behind a coffin, talking about the life that had just slipped away.

In the end everyone fell silent. It was deep, deep night. Illya wasn’t sure how late it was, but he thought perhaps it was two or three in the morning. He sat there in the boat, watching the dark figures before him, slumped against each other. Little snores rose from some. Others just breathed softly. They were all, he thought, asleep. He sat there, wide awake, his stomach roiling and his throat thick with sickness. At last he had the luxury of allowing himself to feel it. It was an awful feeling, a feeling of being out of control of his own body. He bent over and rested his forehead on his folded arms. There was nothing he could do, but there was nothing he had to do at the moment but sit in this boat and not fall asleep.

‘Illya.’

Napoleon’s voice was very quiet, like a parent afraid of waking the children. It drifted across the water from a place of darkness. The black water was lapping at the black sides of the boats, the passengers were slumbering, the stars were fleeting in and out of sight behind clouds. 

‘Yes,’ Illya replied, turning his head so his voice wasn’t muffled, but not lifting it from his arms.

‘You doing okay?’

‘I’m doing okay,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon said.

He sounded very close, but very far away at the same time. This was a huge, terrifying responsibility for Napoleon. He was the one who had decided to sink the ship, and now they were adrift in four small boats in the endless ocean. He had ran and sneaked about the ship despite having been held down on the deck and flogged viciously, and had set the explosives and calmly headed the process of getting almost a hundred people into the lifeboats. He had a lot of weight on his shoulders. 

‘Sanderson,’ Napoleon called then, and from the other side of him came back, ‘Aye, sir.’

The respectful and prompt reply was a good sign, at least. Napoleon had command of them.

‘Everything all right?’ Napoleon asked, and the answer came again, ‘Aye, sir.’

‘Morgan,’ Napoleon called out, and the reply was just as swift.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, sir. All quiet.’

‘We all have at least a couple more seaman in our boats,’ Napoleon said then. ‘Commanders will take this first watch. Everyone’s been asleep for about an hour. In three hours wake your next in command and get some rest yourself. They can wake the next man after four hours for the next watch.’

There was a muddle of acknowledgements, and then Illya said, ‘I don’t need to sleep.’

‘Illya,’ Napoleon said firmly. ‘Whether you feel you need to or not, I want you to sleep.’

He didn’t like the idea of both him and Napoleon sleeping at the same time. He didn’t know that he entirely trusted either the crew or the passengers. But he replied, ‘All right,’ because it was easier than arguing. Telling Napoleon he would sleep didn’t mean he would, in fact, sleep.

It was an odd, funereal silence that finally fell. The rest of the people were only sleeping, but everything was coloured with the death of Captain Shark and his ship. Perhaps the four watching men were the only people awake for hundreds of miles. The sea rose and fell and rose and fell, and Illya sat there, his hands resting lightly on the oar, just staring into the darkness. One lamp was lit in each boat, but they were very small lights indeed against the vastness of the black sea and sky.

He held in a moan. He wanted to drop his head to his hands again, but he was afraid of falling asleep if he did that, so he stayed bolt upright, just watching, and listening to the soft lap of waves against the hulls of the boats. He always hoped that the sickness would wear off the longer he was on the water, but it never did. It was worse now because he couldn’t see the horizon to orient himself, and the sea was getting rougher. It wasn’t enough to worry him, but just enough to make him feel bad.

He eyed the lumpy shape of the man in front of him in the darkness. That was the one who had tried to lead the limp little rebellion to save Shark. He didn’t like being trapped in a boat with people who might not follow his orders. People could so easily turn into savages. Supposing they weren’t picked up by anyone soon, savagery would descend fast if they didn’t work hard to stop it.

It would be ironic, he thought with a little smile, if they never were picked up; if they just drifted to some deserted island and had to set up their homes there. They had a thatcher and a glazier – but no glass. They had a pianist, but no piano. A librarian, but no books. A baker, but no flour. Perhaps they were all intelligent, resourceful people. Perhaps they would be able to survive on a deserted island. It would be hard work, though. He remembered Lord of the Flies, and shivered. This wasn’t how he had envisioned his life’s direction.

He shook himself. It was easy to let his thoughts run towards doom when he was on the water. It was always that way.

‘Napoleon,’ he said softly.

‘Yes,’ came the quiet reply from the next boat.

‘How are the children?’ he asked.

He felt for those two children, the only children on board the ship. Perhaps after they had settled on their safe island Shark would have encouraged breeding. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that; especially if he had ended up being part of it. Shark had wanted the perfect society. Would he have wanted perfectly bred children? The thought of eugenics made him shudder, as did the thought of those two little girls growing up to be nothing more than bodies to carry children. The professionals Shark had enticed into his community had been almost exclusively males.

‘They’re asleep as far as I can tell,’ Napoleon replied. He didn’t have to speak very loudly for his voice to carry across the water.

‘Good,’ Illya said. ‘They must have been scared.’

‘I don’t know if they fully understood,’ Napoleon said.

‘They will,’ Illya replied. ‘Later. Children have a way of understanding things.’

There had been a lot of things happening during his childhood, during the war, and while he might not have always understood the intricate details, he had always understood more than the adults around him had given him credit for. He had seen many more things than the adults had thought he had seen. He had understood the finality of death, and he had always seen his mother’s fear, no matter how she tried to hide it.

‘Still sick?’ Napoleon asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry. Maybe we’ll be on a larger ship soon.’

That felt like wishful thinking.

‘How’s your back?’ Illya asked.

Napoleon grunted, then said, ‘Sore, but it’s all right.’

‘We should have brought a radio,’ Illya said.

He remembered arguing for having a radio on that awful raft, and being turned down. Sometimes Waverly was far too cold for anyone’s good.

‘We have flares. And there wasn’t time,’ Napoleon said. ‘You know that. Explosives don’t wait nicely for everyone to get off the ship.’

‘I know,’ Illya replied.

He rested his chin on his hands, and watched the darkness. He hoped to god that someone would find them before it was too late.

  


((O))

  


The air grew colder and the wind picked up. There was an odd tone to the darkness now, as if there were just a little light starting to radiate through the atoms of the air. The boat rocked and jerked and rocked and jerked, and Illya hung over the side and vomited miserably. He was thirsty then, but the water container was at the stern of the boat and he wasn’t about to try to navigate through all those sleeping bodies in the darkness. He dipped his hand into the sea water and splashed a little on his lips, and spat the salty taste back into the sea.

‘Kuryakin,’ a deep voice called.

He swallowed and tried to steady himself, and said, ‘Yes.’

‘You should sleep.’

It was Morgan, speaking from the boat on the other side of Napoleon’s.

‘I don’t need to,’ Illya said.

‘All men need to sleep,’ Morgan replied. ‘You’re seasick.’

‘Yes,’ Illya acknowledged, because there was no point in denying it. ‘You’ve slept?’ he asked, because Morgan had taken first watch, and he should be sleeping now.

‘Yes,’ Morgan replied. ‘The waves woke me. You should let them rock you to sleep. It’s getting rougher. You’ll feel worse, awake.’

There was something about his voice that made Illya feel he could trust him. He spent a lot of his life trying to work out if he could trust people or not, and the wrong decisions could be deadly. Morgan had proven himself to be a loyal first officer, though, and now the ship and the man he was loyal to were gone, Illya didn’t think he was a danger.

‘Are you going to stay awake now?’ Illya asked.

‘Yes. Dawn’s coming. I like to watch the sunrise.’

‘All right,’ Illya said.

He flicked a look at his watch, trying to make out the luminescent marks through slightly fuzzy vision. Boris Driadnov, ship’s cook, had not used reading glasses. He thought that Napoleon would be waking soon. He had overheard him talking to a crewmember in his boat, arranging to be woken after four hours, because, of course, Napoleon had never intended to sleep long enough to let two men he didn’t know well take the watch.

‘All right,’ he said again. ‘I’ll get some sleep.’

He reached forward and lightly shook the shoulder of the man in front of him and to his left. The man grunted and came awake blearily, first muttering something in another language, and then switching to English.

‘Time for your watch,’ Illya said. ‘Wake the next man in four hours.’

The man seemed confused, so Illya repeated in German, which he thought was what he had spoken when he woke. He replied in German, his voice more awake now, and more friendly, too. It was amazing what being able to speak a person’s language did.

‘I’m going to sleep,’ Illya said, and he leant forward over the oar, resting his head on his folded arms. It wasn’t as good as lying down, but having his head a little lower helped. It wasn’t easy to go to sleep, but sleep eventually came.

  


((O))

  


He awoke, all nerves firing, to the sound of gunshots. It was light, and the sky was a dull grey above a rough sea. He straightened up quickly, staring around, then quickly checked his movement because it made his head spin. He focussed his eyes, seeing a smoky trail in the sky. The crack wasn’t gunfire, he realised. Napoleon was standing in his lifeboat, holding a flare gun up above his head, firing off flares.

‘Ship?’ he asked, and Napoleon pointed.

‘There, on the horizon. Can’t be more than a mile away.’

Illya could just see a smudge of something on the very edge where the sea met the sky. Napoleon could see more because he was standing up, but Illya very much didn’t want to stand up. He looked across at the other boats. The two men on watch in them were watching the horizon. Morgan was standing with a hand shading his eyes. The passengers were starting to stir from sleep at the sounds of the flare gun and talking. In Napoleon’s boat the two young children were curled against their mother in sleep, her arms around them.

‘Have they seen us?’ he asked. ‘How many have you sent up?’

‘Only two so far,’ Napoleon said. ‘I don’t want to use them all. They’re not moving away from us, at any rate. They seem to be getting closer. I think they’re travelling at an oblique angle to us.’

‘They’re turning,’ Morgan said confidently from the other boat.

Illya took him at his word, and Napoleon did too. The longer he watched the clearer it was that the ship was turning to head their way. But the sea was becoming rougher and his head felt as if it were about ready to roll off onto the bottom boards. As his little boat-full of passengers started to wake he could see the sickness beginning in some of them. It was good, in a way, to not be alone, but he wished he could give himself over wholly to the feeling, instead of having to be in charge.

It took far too long before the ship reached them. All Illya wanted was to be on a larger vessel than this awful little boat that felt far too flimsy for the vastness of the ocean around them. The higher the growing wind whipped the waves the more precarious the boat felt, and it was obvious that the weather was turning fast.

As the ship crept closer it was revealed to be a massive, modern container ship piled high with great metal crates, its bow slapping through the growing waves. It finally heaved alongside, its sides rearing up like cliffs, and the delicate process of getting the passengers aboard began.

‘Let me take this,’ Napoleon told Illya as soon as they were on deck, clapping a hand on his shoulder lightly.

‘And steal all the credit?’ Illya asked him, trying to sound arch but not quite managing. ‘I’m all right, Napoleon.’

‘And that’s why you’re the delicate colour of pistachio ice cream,’ Napoleon said, regarding him. ‘It’s not a weakness. You’re not the only one who’s sick, you know. It’s getting rougher. Go below as soon as you can. Find somewhere you can lie down.’

Illya couldn’t quite bear the thought of an enclosed space, perhaps with cooking smells and the stench of fuel. It wasn’t quite like being back on a submarine, but it certainly wasn’t any better right now. Then he saw Vasili Chekorokavich a few yards away, looking bewildered as an Australian accented sailor spoke to him in loud English, and he sighed.

‘I had better help Chekorokavich,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t understand a word of English.’

  


((O))

  


The ship was an Australian cargo carrier, bringing ton upon ton of household goods to Port Darwin. That, at least, was a relief. It felt far more direct to go to a country where the common language was English and with direct connections to many of the larger countries in the world, than to end up in an obscure little port somewhere where no one could communicate. At least Australia was a signatory to  the  U.N.C.L.E..

Still, it was a stress. Captain Shark had so persuaded some of the passengers that Napoleon and Illya both had concerns that they might want to continue with their plan of setting up an island community safe from threat of nuclear fallout.

‘You think this lot might try to take over the ship?’ the captain asked in concern.

They were seated with Captain Taylor in a comfortable little sitting room full of dark wood and brass. Illya couldn’t help his eyes moving continually to the window, so that he could see the horizon. The ship was rolling enough that when the captain offered them drinks, he only filled the glasses half full, and advised them to keep hold of them instead of setting them down. The porthole showed alternately a view of grey sea, and grey sky.

Napoleon shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I have doubts that they have enough get up and go amongst themselves to try anything. But it would be wise to keep an eye on them, especially those who were among Shark’s crew. There might be some fanatics in the woodpile.’

‘I think Morgan can be trusted,’ Illya put in, turning his glass in his hands. He had accepted the scotch out of politeness, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea to drink it. His inner ears were having enough trouble as it was.

‘Yes, I think so too,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘He was loyal to Shark, more than to the cause, and Shark is gone now. He knows there’s nothing left to fight for.’

‘Well, I can tell you one thing,’ Captain Taylor said laconically. ‘This ship doesn’t contain explosives, just household items. They’re not going to be able to blow  _ this _ ship up.’

‘Actually, it was Napoleon who blew up Captain Shark’s ship,’ Illya put in, and Napoleon shot him an exasperated look.

‘I blew Captain Shark’s ship up to force the issue,’ Napoleon amended smoothly. ‘It was the only way to put an end to this.’

‘A hell of a risky way,’ the captain murmured, but then he smiled. ‘Well, it worked, and I heartily approve of sending pirates to the bottom. Now, you two men look exhausted. There’ll be some doubling up necessary, but it’s the middle of the day so most beds are free. Would you like to eat first or sleep first?’

‘Sleep,’ Illya said, as Napoleon said, ‘Eat.’

‘Eat,’ Napoleon said again more firmly. ‘It’s been a while since our last meal.’

Illya pressed his free hand over his eyes and forehead, wondering if he could get away with throwing the whisky into something where it wouldn’t be found, and how he could avoid even having to watch someone eat. But when plates of spaghetti and meatballs were brought in, the scent tempted him despite himself. He hadn’t eaten since the evening before on Shark’s ship, and then he had taken odd bites but hadn’t really filled himself up, so distracted was he with trying to keep on top of the situation. Everything he had eaten, he had ejected from his stomach while in the lifeboat.

‘Ah, I thought you’d feel different once it was in front of you,’ Napoleon commented, watching Illya approvingly as he picked up his fork.

He twisted spaghetti round the tines and brought the load to his mouth. He actually managed to chew and swallow, but then an extra lurch of the ship brought him to the edge.

‘Sorry. Deck,’ he managed to say, and he swayed out of the room, through a passage, and out into the brisk salt air. He gasped that air in, feeling a little better for a moment, but the metal deck dropped from below him again, and suddenly he was retching over the rail and watching the sick being whipped away by the wind.

  


((O))

  


It was utterly miserable, being at sea. Illya hadn’t been at sea for such a long period since his navy days. He had done a lot to avoid it, because he hadn’t forgotten the misery of it. It had been terrible whenever they had been at the surface, or on the few occasions he had been forced to take passage on a ship. He had spent hours like this, standing on deck, staring out desperately across the sea, hoping for the feeling to go away. When he had been required on duty, he had just been forced to hold it down and carry on.

He stood on the deck of this Australian cargo ship, leaning on the rail, keeping his eyes fixed on the softly curving horizon, trying to keep his stomach contents where they belonged. There wasn’t anything left but that didn’t mean his body didn’t try to expel the non-existent food. His head felt as if something were pressing down hard on the top of it, and no matter how cold the wind was it never seemed to clear that feeling. The sea was stirring up into foaming peaks and sudden troughs, the great container ship pitching and rolling and smashing into the waves. It reminded him of being up in high Atlantic latitudes in the submarine, even though they were almost as far as you could go from the Arctic Circle now. It was the tail-end of a typhoon, Captain Taylor had told them. It didn’t really matter what it was causing it. Whatever it was, it was miserable.

He groaned and clenched his hands around the rail, and tried not to shiver. It was cold out here, and he was standing in his ridiculously out of place dinner suit, soaked with spray, staring into the grey water. He had always thought that the South Pacific would be blue. He had always imagined it being calm. It was in the name, after all. Of course the choppy water around the Aleutian Islands between Siberia and Alaska hadn’t been blue and calm, but then, they hadn’t surfaced much around there. It didn’t do to make yourself too visible when you strayed towards US waters. The South Pacific, though, was supposed to be a paradise, with jewels of islands set in the spread of brilliant blue silk. He knew that because he had seen it in films.

The door behind opened and then clanged heavily shut. The ship tilted and righted again, and he swallowed hard.

‘Are you still out here?’

He didn’t look round. He knew it was Napoleon.

‘I can’t think of a better place to be,’ he said darkly. He shivered. ‘I can’t believe we’re on another ship. There have been too many ships of late.’

Napoleon clapped a hand firmly onto his shoulder and let it lie there.

‘Better that than in the brine. Where else would you have us be?’

Illya concentrated hard for a moment on his stomach before speaking again. His head felt as if it were turning inside out.

‘In a helicopter, making our way back to dry land,’ he said.

Napoleon tutted softly. ‘Now, you know we couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a job to do here. U.N.C.L.E. is like a marriage. For better or for worse.’

‘Most definitely for worse, at the moment,’ Illya murmured. ‘Sometimes I hate the responsibilities of this job.’

‘The responsibilities aren’t too heavy at the moment, at least,’ Napoleon assured him. ‘The passengers are quiet. Shark’s crew seem to have accepted the situation. A lot of the passengers have been laid low with seasickness, like you. It makes for a quiet voyage.’

‘Napoleon, don’t  _ you _ ever get seasick?’ Illya asked rather jealously.

‘Never, mon cher.’

‘What about your back?’ Illya asked, angling his head to look at him briefly. He had noticed that Napoleon was walking rather stiffly.

‘Stings like hell, but there isn’t much I can do about it. Anyway, I brought you some water.’

Illya huffed. ‘I think I have enough already,’ he said, because his suit was soaked and there was water every way he looked.

‘For the inside of you, not the outside.’ He nudged against Illya’s arm. ‘Here.’

Illya took the plastic cup he was offering him, and drank it down. It was a little warm and tasted stale, and his throat tightened.

‘Thank you,’ he said, making to pass the cup back, but the wind caught it from his fingertips and whipped it away into the sea. He watched it falling, flying, falling, until it hit the water and bobbed there, a little white speck on the wide grey spread of mountain peaks and deep valleys. It was caught into the foaming whiteness that ran along the side of the ship, and disappeared.

Illya looked back up to the sky, which was almost the same grey as the sea, and heavy with the promise of rain. Spray was salty on everything. Every time he licked his lips he could taste salt. His fingers tasted of salt. The air tasted of salt. He was sick of salt.

The sea dropped away again beneath them, and it was more than Illya’s stomach could take. He retched over the railings again, watching the just-drunk water being whipped down and sideways by the wind, until it became one with the sea.

‘If you were a girl, I’d hold your hair,’ Napoleon said.

Illya panted, wishing he had another cup of water. ‘If I were a girl you’d take me to nicer places than this,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you come below and get another drink?’ Napoleon asked him, putting a hand on his arm.

‘No, thank you,’ Illya replied. ‘I prefer the view up here.’

Napoleon sighed. ‘You’ve been up here for hours. You can’t stay on deck the whole time we’re on this ship,’ he protested. 

‘I don’t see why not. I have always liked a challenge,’ Illya replied grimly. 

‘It’s going to be a good few days before we’re back in port. You went below on Shark’s ship. You even ate meals there.’

‘The sea was calmer when we were on Shark’s ship.’

‘Illya, you just can’t camp out on deck,’ Napoleon told him. ‘Look at you. You’re soaked with spray. Come below and get dry.’

Illya groaned. Napoleon was right. He couldn’t spend a week on deck, no matter how much he wanted to. Right now, though, he hardly felt he could let go of the deck rail.

‘Look, if we find somewhere midships and low down it’ll be better,’ Napoleon urged him. ‘Come below, lie down.’

‘Napoleon, this is a cargo ship, not a cruise liner,’ Illya retorted. He let go of the rail for long enough to wave at the space behind him, that was filled with containers stretching away to the bows. ‘There is nothing midships but containers. Are you suggesting packing me into one of those?’

He turned back to the rail, because taking his eyes off the horizon was a mistake. His mouth was still full of the taste of stomach acid.

‘Can’t you just go and fetch me another glass of water?’ he asked. ‘I can’t come below at the moment. Really, I can’t. Just get me something to wash out my mouth, and let me stay out here with my misery.’

Napoleon shook his head  emphatically .

‘No, Illya, I will not go fetch you a glass of water,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be dark in a few hours, and the meteorological report says the storm’s going to whip up into a good one, and you’re not staying outside for that.’

Illya dropped his forehead onto the rail for a moment, letting the cool sink through his skin. He wondered how easy it would be to convince Napoleon that he’d be all right as long as he lashed himself to something. He didn’t think that Napoleon understood. Napoleon didn’t suffer from any kind of motion sickness, and it was impossible to describe the whole-body invasiveness of the feeling to someone who could read on a car journey without a second thought, face backwards on a train without having to see out of the window, and walk the decks of a ship in weather like this without even a hint of nausea.

‘Come on,’ Napoleon said, pulling a little at his arm. ‘Come inside. Get dry, and lie down.’

Illya let go of the rail, and let Napoleon take him inside.

  


((O))

  


The bed was narrow and not entirely comfortable, but Illya had to grudgingly acknowledge that Napoleon had been right. He did feel better both for being dry and lying down. He was dressed in someone else’s clothes. One of the crew had leant him rough jeans and a t-shirt, but right now he only had the t-shirt and his underwear on, and he was trying to keep his head as flat to the pillow as possible. He lay there, staring at the featureless ceiling above him, knowing that if he sat up even in the slightest all the sickness would come flooding back.

There was a little knock on the door to the cabin, and when he grunted a reply it opened. It was the pianist, Vasili Chekorokavich. He stood there in the doorway for a moment, looking around the small room, then came in and sat down on the edge of Illya’s bed.

‘Forgive me,’ he said in Russian. ‘I’m tired of wandering the halls of this ship like a ghost. I can’t talk to anyone. They can’t talk to me. They have a piano in one of their common rooms but it’s tuned so badly I can’t bear to touch it. I think they want me to play. I won’t play such a terrible creature as that.’

Illya laughed quietly. ‘So you’re hiding in here? I thought Captain Shark took you to tune his pianos?’

Chekorokavich gave a quick snort of derision. ‘Can a jockey perform operations on a horse? No, one calls a vet. Can a master chef fix his oven when it breaks? Ha! I’m a pianist, Comrade Kuryakin. I don’t tune pianos. I play them.’

‘Well, I suppose so,’ Illya murmured. ‘Do you know, I saw you perform in Carnegie Hall. Your Bach – ’ He sighed. ‘I don’t have the words to describe it. You infused your performance with such a controlled passion. It’s a shame the piano here isn’t tuned.’

‘You are a music lover, then?’ Chekorokavich asked.

Illya shrugged. He thought about sitting up a little so he could face Chekorokavich but when he moved his head he decided to stay lying down.

‘I play some instruments – not to your level. Of course I like to listen to well-performed classical music, but I also love jazz. Music can transport a person, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, music – ’ Chekorokavich’s eyes became distant. ‘No, you are right. There are no words to describe how music lives in my soul. That barbarian, Shark. He wanted a man who can hammer out ditties to entertain the idiots in his crew. I need audiences who can understand what they’re listening to.’

‘Well, perhaps when we arrive in Australia we can find an audience for you,’ Illya suggested, and Chekorokavich laughed.

‘Perhaps when we arrive in Australia the Soviet Union will pull me back home and never let me leave again.’ His face took on a guarded expression, then. ‘I wondered, perhaps, if I will ask the Australians to keep me. Can you imagine? Never being cold, and free to travel wherever I liked?’

Illya smiled. ‘Perhaps you could ask them that,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t talk about it too loudly on board, but perhaps. You  _ are _ a renowned pianist. It might be that the Australians would be glad to have you. After all, if you go back home after this...’

He trailed off, thinking darkly of how his country often treated people who had acted in a way which raised suspicion. It hadn’t been Chekorokavich’s fault that he had been abducted, but often the authorities looked on these cases with very little rationality. It was very likely that Chekorokavich would be refused permission to travel in future.  If the wrong person were in charge of his case, it was almost as likely that he would be sent to a labour camp.

‘Well, it’s something I have some time to think about,’ Chekorokavich shrugged. ‘I know you won’t speak of this, will you?’

‘I will never speak of this,’ Illya promised. For one thing, he couldn’t afford to get involved in politics like this.

Chekorokavich patted a hand on his leg through the blanket.

‘When we are in port, let me find a piano, and I will play for you.’

‘That would be – ’ Illya began, but he broke off as the door to the little room opened again and the eighteen year old fiancée of Romain Lavabeau ran in.

‘Monsieur Kuryakin! Oh, Monsieur Kuryakin! You must come and help!’

After a year at the Sorbonne it was as easy for Illya to slip into French as it was to swap between Russian and English. He barely thought about it as he replied in French, ‘What’s wrong?’

He was sitting up, pulling on the jeans that had been lent to him. His head swum and he tried to control the sickness.

‘It’s one of the men! He has a knife, and he’s holding it to Monsieur Solo’s throat!’

That galvanised him even further. Chekorokavich was looking between the two of them with an enquiring expression, but there wasn’t time to translate everything for him.

‘Where are they?’ he asked. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘They’re in the dining room. Oh, come quickly!’ she urged him. ‘He threatens to cut Monsieur Solo’s throat if the ship is not turned around!’

It would be so much easier if it didn’t feel as if his stomach and his brain were loose in his body, flailing around. He fumbled with the button on the jeans, and flapped a hand at the girl, ushering her out of the room.

‘Go,’ he told her. ‘Show me where they are.’

She cast a look at his bare feet, but he wasn’t going to bother with shoes. He followed her out into the corridor, swaying with the motion of the ship. The storm was stronger, he was sure. The roll was worse than it had been. He remembered being in the submarine as it lay just below the surface, though, when the stench of fuel and the roll together had been unbearable. If he had got through that, he could get through this. He followed the girl up a flight of stairs, and another, then lurched along another corridor towards the mess room doors.

‘Wait,’ he said softly, putting a hand on her arm. He nodded towards the doors ahead of them. ‘Are they in there?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, catching on to the need for quiet. ‘Yes, Mr Solo and that man – No, I don’t know his name. Monsieur – oh – I don’t know. Monsieur Harper, I think. He was talking about how good it had been on Captain Shark’s ship. He doesn’t want to go back home.’

Illya sighed. He had been afraid of something like this. He glanced around, looking at the mess room doors ahead and what he thought was a door into the galley to the left. He hadn’t any weapon, and he needed something.

‘All right,’ he said softly to her. ‘You stay here, all right? Stay outside of that room. I need to find – something. You stay outside.’

The deserted, compact galley was swaying with the motion of the ship, metal pots clanking and slipping in their holders. Illya wondered where the cook was, but maybe he had gone into the dining room when the trouble started. Maybe he had left, since the cooking was finished. There would be no point trying to cook in this swell. But there was still an array of items for cooking. Illya swept his eyes over the lot, judging what would be most useful, and eventually chose a sharp knife with a blade about eight inches long. He weighed it in his hand. It felt like a good knife.

The ship lurched again and all the pots in the galley rattled and clanged. It was good because it covered any noise he might make, but with the swaying his stomach flipped again.

_ I cannot be sick _ , he told himself. He closed his eyes momentarily, repeating in his head,  _ I cannot be sick _ .

It didn’t work to stop the sickness, but it helped to focus him. He crept forward towards the doors that he thought must lead straight into the mess room. There was a small window in each door, and he could stand there and see through.

It was hard to make out everything that was happening through the crowd. There were little clusters of people; passengers from Shark’s ship, Shark’s crew, crew from this container ship. Most of Shark’s passengers were still in their evening wear. He couldn’t see the two young children, thank god. They must be somewhere else. It was late; perhaps they were in bed by now. Morgan was there, standing with his hands held out, as if trying to reason with someone. A member of the container ship’s crew was next to him. He couldn’t quite see Napoleon or the man threatening him.

He slipped across to look through the other window, trying to get a better angle. Then he could see them; Napoleon standing very still with a slightly taller man behind him, one arm around his chest, and what looked like a steak knife held against his throat. Napoleon could have flipped him in a moment, stood like that, but the knife was pressing so hard against his skin that a little blood stood out in a vivid trickle down his neck. A sudden jerk could make that blade slip, and then Napoleon would be bleeding out.

Illya opened the door very softly and slowly, glad of the clanking from the galley behind him to disguise any noise. He wasn’t going to make a grand entrance. His main strength would be surprise.

‘Now, come on, Mr Harper,’ Morgan was saying in a low, steady voice. ‘We were all loyal to Captain Shark. I still hold that loyalty in my heart. But it’s over. You must see that it’s over.’

‘I see nothing!’ Harper retorted in a high, unsteady voice.

Illya bit his lip a little into his mouth. It was this kind of unprofessional, emotional, panicked type that was the most dangerous. People like that were hard to predict, hard to read, hard to reason with.

‘I see nothing but  _ this _ man,’ and he tightened his arm across Napoleon’s chest, shaking him a little, ‘blew up our home and expects us to come along like little lambs. Well, we got another ship here, right? We got a ship tanked up with fuel and full of all the things we need to set up our homes. I seen the cargo lists. Kitchen equipment, beds, furniture, kiddies’ toys. We don’t need nothing more than that. So we take this boat, and we do what Captain Shark wanted. In his memory. We owe that to him.’

‘Taylor, you don’t owe Shark anything,’ Napoleon said in a low voice, and then stopped as the man jerked his arm and the knife pressed a little harder into his throat. That red line of blood was the brightest thing in the room.

Napoleon stopped speaking. It was obvious to Illya that he was calm, but deeply worried. Illya moved forward a few steps, hoping that no one would notice him. His bare feet helped him walk in silence. He wasn’t dressed to stand out, at least, and he was used to making himself part of the crowd.

‘Mr Harper,’ Morgan tried again.

Illya appreciated his calm tone and his attempts to help, but in some ways it might be better if he weren’t saying anything at all. This man seemed so volatile. He was afraid if Morgan said the wrong thing it might push him over the edge.

‘No one’s going to take this ship,’ Morgan said. ‘Not a single member of my crew is going to do that.’

Illya took advantage of Harper’s distraction to move a little closer. He was standing behind a small cluster of Shark’s passengers, trying to very carefully assess exactly how Harper was holding the knife and how his hand would move when Illya acted. Illya held his own knife down at his side, half hidden against his arm. He wasn’t sure how good his aim would be right now, with the ship swaying and his stomach churning and his mind spinning.

In the end he didn’t have time to calculate. Morgan made the mistake of taking a step forward, and Harper’s hand jerked, and Illya threw the knife in a single smooth movement, reflex taking over. His mind must have worked out exactly how to throw but it was never a conscious thought. The knife whistled through the air straight towards Harper’s right shoulder, embedding itself deep ly in his flesh.

Napoleon reacted instantly, grabbing Harper’s right hand, forcing the steak knife from his grip, and kicking it away when it hit the floor. There was blood running down his neck but he focussed only on Harper, twisting his arm behind his back and forcing him to his knees. Harper was crying out in pain, his eyes glazing, but Illya didn’t spare sympathy for him. He pushed through the shocked figures that were coming in closer now, snapping sternly, ‘All right, everyone move back. Move back. Give us room. Someone fetch the medical officer.’

‘Ahh, Illya. Late as usual,’ Napoleon said, looking up with a grin. He was kneeling behind Harper, wrestling him downward, trying to get him to lie down on the floor.

‘Just in time, I should say,’ Illya retorted.

He knelt down on the other side of Harper, helping Napoleon to make him lie down. The man was gasping and moaning, and blood was blooming through the cotton of his shirt.

‘You okay?’ Illya asked Napoleon, and Napoleon nodded.

‘Nothing more than superficial. I’m glad you rose from your sick bed to help, though.’ He nodded at the knife in the man’s shoulder. ‘Nice choice of weapon. What would have happened if you’d missed?’

‘Hopefully I would have missed in the right direction,’ Illya said dryly.

‘There was about an inch between his shoulder and mine,’ Napoleon pointed out.

‘I know,’ Illya nodded. ‘That’s why I aimed an inch higher than your shoulder. I don’t suppose you happen to have a handkerchief?’

Napoleon pulled out a clean, white handkerchief from his pocket and Illya carefully wrapped it around where the  blade  entered Harper’s shoulder, trying to staunch some of the bleeding without moving the knife. At the touch Harper’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted. Illya wasn’t entirely disappointed. He glanced up to see Morgan looking down at them, and he nodded briefly.

‘Thanks for keeping him distracted,’ he said simply to Morgan.

He closed his eyes briefly as the ship rolled again. Something slid off a table somewhere and smashed to the floor.

‘Chin up,’ Napoleon said cheerfully, dabbing his fingers at the blood on his own neck. ‘It could be worse.’

‘Having my throat cut would be a relief,’ Illya said darkly.

‘Try saying that when you’re the one about to be carved up like tenderloin,’ Napoleon returned. Then he reached out and patted Illya’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get him secured and then you can go lie down. I’ll wire Waverly and ask him nicely never to send you on a mission involving boats again.’

‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ Illya said, fixing him with a glare. ‘Mr Waverly really doesn’t need to know about this.’

Napoleon grinned. ‘You’ve done pretty well hiding it from us all so far. No wonder you turned me down every time I offered to take you sailing.’

Illya would have shaken his head if he wasn’t afraid of sending himself into a spin from which he wouldn’t be able to recover.

‘Only madmen take to the seas for pleasure.’ His stomach was lurching again, and he really didn’t want to be sick here. ‘How would you like to get him secured on your own? After all, I brought him down for you. Isn’t it your turn to do some work?’

Napoleon looked him up and down, and grinned. ‘Go back to bed, tovarisch,’ he said. ‘I can handle it from here.’

  


((O))

  


It was dark in the little cabin, with only a little light coming in from the corridor around the cracks in the door. Every time the ship rolled Illya was pressed against the wall, and when it rolled back again he slumped towards the raised edge of the bed. This had been going on for so long that his body ought to be used to it, but there was no getting used to it. He just had to endure.

He remembered the first night lying in his bunk on the submarine when they were resting just below the surface. When the light was off it was utterly dark. He could hear the noises of the other men but he wasn’t interested in talking. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he would vomit. He was afraid that all of this had been the most terrible mistake. He had only been on board for a day and the whole experience was terrible. He wasn’t sure of his crewmates, the food was terrible, and even if it hadn’t been he was too sick to eat. The stench of fuel was awful, and the boat was rolling like a cork. He couldn’t imagine how he would be able to perform any of his duties because he could hardly stand. He couldn’t even lift his head from the pillow without wanting to eject his stomach contents onto the floor.

He had never got over the sickness, but there had been sparkling moments. There had been that time with the polar bear staring at him over the ice. There had been the wonder of a sun that never set. There had been that incident with the igloo… It had been an amazing sight, an entire igloo improbably ablaze on the white-blue-gold snow, ice turning to water and running and hissing and steaming in the sub-zero air. He would never forget those things.

The door from the corridor opened, and light flooded in. Illya blinked, trying to see against the light, but he recognised Napoleon’s silhouette.

‘Still awake?’ Napoleon asked softly, and Illya grunted.

‘If I had been asleep you would have just woken me. Do I take it that Mr Taylor is secured?’

‘Mr Taylor is in a bed in the sick bay with stitches in his shoulder and some hefty painkillers. He’s not your best friend at the moment, but he’s not going to trouble anyone.’

‘And the rest of them?’ Illya asked suspiciously.

Napoleon came further into the cabin and half-closed the door, so that the light from out there was dimmed.

‘I think they were all shocked by what happened. I eavesdropped on a few conversations. Bits about it all being an adventure but being glad they were going home, bits about never having wanted to be a part of all this in the first place. I’m not getting dissent from them. They just want to go home.’

‘Don’t we all,’ Illya sighed. The thought of his own broad bed, unmoving and steady on beautifully dry land, was a siren song.

‘They’re battening down all the hatches for the storm,’ Napoleon told him. ‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but we’ll be all right. It’ll slow us down some through the night but forecasts predict clear skies by morning.’

‘Are you going to sleep?’ Illya asked.

‘I was rather hoping to, yes. In here, if I can find a space. There’s hardly room for a third of us on this thing. Some of the passengers have been talking about breaking into a container of mattresses and hauling some out. I think there might be another rebellion before we hit land.’

Illya sighed. He would do his utmost to defend the ship against a takeover, but he didn’t want to fight battles over mattresses. 

Sitting up as little as possible, he slid out of bed and onto the floor. 

‘I’ve been monopolising this one. Get in and get some sleep.’

‘You sure?’ Napoleon asked. 

‘I’m sure. You could do with a mattress for your back. It’s warm enough in here. I’ll take the floor.’

He snagged a pillow from the bed and pushed it under his head, and lay there while Napoleon moved about in the semi-darkness, stripping off clothes and folding them away.

‘Here. I don’t need two blankets,’ Napoleon said when he came over to the bed. He peeled one off the bed and dropped it on Illya, then slipped under the covers and became nothing more than a lump in the darkness.

Illya arranged the spare blanket over himself, turned on his side, and closed his eyes. Perhaps he could pretend the rocking of the ship was like the rocking of a cradle. Perhaps he would manage to get some sleep tonight.

  


((O))

  


He woke into a room just as dim as it had been the night before. He lay there a little while, eyes closed, just feeling the room around him. He could hear Napoleon’s breathing, soft and gentle and slow, in the bed above him. He could hear odd little creaks coming from the body of the ship, every now and then. But there was no rolling. There was no pitching.

He opened his eyes slowly, focussing on the dark angles of shadows in the room. There was still a little light coming in from the corridor, but there was no window in this room to let in daylight. He looked at his watch, squinting to focus on the luminescent hands, and saw that it was not long past dawn.

There was a blessed clearness in his head. That realisation came to him slowly. The floor beneath him was steady, moving gently and subtly with the swell of the sea, but not pitching like it had been last night. He had woken up some hours ago when he had found himself rolling across the floor until he was wedged under the bed above, and he hadn’t even been able to lift his head up without unbearable nausea. Now his stomach felt settled. It was a beautiful feeling.

He sat up cautiously, and no nausea assailed him. He reached out, feeling for his borrowed jeans, and found the rough fabric under his hand. He pulled the trousers on, and stood up.

It felt like a miracle, being able to stand up without sickness. He stepped out into the corridor, where dim lights ranged along the ceiling. There was hardly any perceivable rolling underfoot.

Suddenly he felt hungry. He was enormously hungry. He felt like he could devour a cow in its entirety. He made his way along the corridor and up stairs, until he reached the mess room. There were a couple of men in there, crew belonging to this ship, and they nodded at him as he entered.

‘Just put your head into the galley,’ one of them told him. ‘Dave’ll see you’re fed.’

He didn’t quite feel like the fried breakfasts the men were eating, but he secured himself a couple of crusty rolls, thick with butter, and a deep mug of tea. He took those out onto the deck.

The sea stunned him. There was the pure blue that he had dreamed of after seeing those South Pacific films. It stretched to the horizon, endless around him, making this great ship feel like a splinter of metal and nothing more. It was rippled with darker and lighter blue where the slight wind ruffled the water. In the east, the sun was rising, and it hovered just above the horizon like a ball of molten metal, blazing forth its light. Pink and gold streaks were reflected in a wide trail on every ripple of water, and were echoed in the rags of cloud that still hung in the sky. The storm had blown itself out, and the sea had become beautiful.

He stood there at the rail and took a deep swallow of the tea. Unbidden, the cook had put sugar in it, and the taste was startlingly good after too long of not being able to keep anything down. He tore into one of the rolls and the simple taste of bread and butter burst into his mouth. Flakes of the crust scattered into the air and were blown away, dancing in the golden light.

There had been moments like this on the submarine, but they were few and far between. Here and now it was already hot, even at dawn. Dawns he had seen like this during his time in the navy had almost always been freezing. He had stood on the deck of the boat and watched his breath cloud and freeze in the air. He had known that down below there was hot food waiting for him, but that there was also the stench of diesel and the cramped quarters and the loud voices of the other men. Those had been precious, beautiful moments when he had grabbed permission to come and stand outside, and all too often those moments had involved a lot of the other men coming up for air, too.

There were probably men outside now, on this ship, but it was such a large ship with such a small crew compared to its size, and he saw no one. He stood there, drinking his tea and eating his rolls, and life felt good. He was only counting time before the swell rose again, he was sure, but he was grateful of this moment.

‘Ah, you’re eating at last.’

He turned, seeing Napoleon coming out of the door behind him. The golden sun struck his face and shone on his hair. He was holding his own mug, but Illya suspected it contained coffee, not tea.

‘I finally find I have an appetite,’ Illya grinned. ‘I might go back inside after a while and see if I can get some more.’

‘I’d wait until later. The baker amongst the passengers said something  yesterday about seeing what he could turn his hand to. He’s supposed to be quite good.’

Illya tossed the last dregs of his tea out over the side of the ship, and watched the droplets sparkling down and down until they disappeared in the foam that ran along the ship’s side.

‘In that case, how about coming for a walk?’ he asked Napoleon with a smile. ‘I’d like to stand at the bows. I’ve heard that sometimes dolphins ride the bow wave.’

‘With you?’ Napoleon asked. ‘I’d be delighted.’


End file.
